You mad? That shit is normal in 99% of the world.

> You mad?

holy shit, you're a trollface meme that can type

Unfortunately you really can't distinguish if it's actually empowering ironic homophobia of a queer individual or not. Wouldn't take it too seriously, it's the internet after all.

I don’t really see any way this could be ironic or empowering. There are bigger problems to worry about, but we may as well recognize this for what it is.

>we may as well recognize this for what it is

I hate this trend of the internet where we have to agree with anyone who is offended. I don't actually recognize this for what it could be, and my experience and opinion is as valid as others.

Who is the offended person here who you think that you have to agree with? I’m not really following.

My post that you’re replying to just said that I don’t think that the comment on GitHub is likely to be an instance of ironic empowering homophobia. If you disagree then I have no particular beef with you on that factual point - I just think you’re wrong.

There was a period in the 90s and 00s when gay meant lame. I’m sure many used it hatefully, but schoolboys were just using play yard lingo.

When gay began to mean GAY, people stopped using it to mean “lame”.

This poster is probably 30-50 years old and likely meant no harm. There’s an internet meme “fake and gay” which has nothing to do with homophobia but instead refers to the 90s usage.

I think everyone is aware of this. However the playground usage is based on homophobia. I can assure you (being 38 myself) that we schoolboys all knew roughly what being gay was and that it was something bad and shameful. I do not want to get overly bent out of shape about some idiot’s casual homophobia on a random corner of the internet, but let’s please not deny that it is casual homophobia.

> When gay began to mean GAY, people stopped using it to mean “lame”.

This is completely ahistorical. The ‘lame’ meaning came long after the ‘homosexual’ meaning.

I’ll speak for myself then. I had no concept of what homosexuality was when I was 9, but parroted speech I heard at school. By 13, I was aware of the people using “gay” to mean “homosexual” and I began confronting anyone saying it, and stopped saying it myself as an adjective to mean lame.

I truly didn’t know. There was no internet, so my only source of culture was media and school.

Sure, some individuals may not have known, but the usage is very obviously rooted in homophobia, and any present day adult should be able to see that. People can make thoughtless mistakes and I don’t think this person is the devil, but the comment is a very clear instance of casual homophobia.

Yeh, I raised it here in that same spirit of acknowledging and calling it out.

I'm in my 30's, very happy that I barely hear this kinda direct homophobia anymore. I've long been unpacking the personal repercussions of `gay === very bad` being deep set in my brain in those formative years.

People stopped using it because of enormous mounting social pressure and increasing awareness of its homophobic roots, not as some innate linguistic slide. The "fake and gay" meme comes from 4chan where it has persisted since "gay" was still a pervasive pejorative term, not as a winking post-modern reference to it. Your optimism about the banality of this history is whimsical and it'd be nice to live in that world, but the actual harm of that usage cannot be divorced from the term regardless of your individual intent.

I say we cancel them. Get the torches and pitchforks!

I really dislike this tendency to (implicitly) exaggerate what people are saying when they point out homophobia or other such prejudices. It kills any possibility of a sensible conversation. No-one in this thread has called for anyone to be ‘canceled’.

I really dislike framing people from different eras as homophobes. Back when this was written this was seen as just a joke, no harm intended, no homophobia involved whatsoever.

The relevant comment is on the linked GitHub page and was written recently (June 1 2023), not in a different era. Perhaps that misconception explains your comment.

Also, no-one in this thread has called anyone a homophobe, but only pointed out that the comment is an instance of casual homophobia. It seems that you’d like to have a particular argument with some kind of caricature of a cancel culture warrior, but I’m afraid no-one present actually meets that description!

We actually live in an era where homophobia is becoming even more socially acceptable then the 2000s, so this is a weird hill for you to die on.

It's difficult to understand with all the yearly gay prides, weddings recognized by the governments, and ability to adopt children. I recognize that there are still improvements, but it's way more accepted than in the 90s and before.

I will give my last drop of blood for homosexuality in Botswana!

- some US or EU soldier, somewhere, probably

I’m not dying on your hill of non-sequiturs, don’t worry.

It turns out the remark this is all about is something in the setup of this repository, not by the original authors of the code. My comment was assuming it was. If so, the remark would be not a very shocking one and not rooted in homophobia, and complaining about it would be like complaining the Bible is misogynistic.

Instead, the remark was made in our era and probably rooted in some infantile meme lord attitude and although in my opinion not expressing real homophobia still not appropriate.